ePODstemology

Mark Fabian

Medicine for intellectual boredom. Host Dr Mark Fabian of Cambridge University brings together an eclectic mix of creative young folk to discuss the most stimulating ideas at the knowledge frontier, from data governance to the metamodern cultural mode, and everything in between. The world's most thoughtful people, having a chat - and you're invited! So turn off your socials, throw away your popular science books, and get ready for some legit galaxy brain takes. Thanks to Keith Spangle for the spaceship cat avatar https://www.deviantart.com/keithspangle

  1. Eat your way to a better world

    May 27

    Eat your way to a better world

    Paul Behrens is British Academy Global Professor at the University of Oxford and Reapra Senior Research Fellow at the Wellbeing Research Centre there. He is an industrial ecologist examining how the ways we produce our lives and the things we consume in them are related to environment stress, especially climate change. In this episode, we discuss the role of demand management in averting ecological disaster - demand management here referring to reducing or changing unsustainable consumption practices. We talk especially about diets and food systems, but also energy, transport, plastics, and the political implications of greening all of the above. Did you know that the UK population reduced its meat consumption to around twice a week we could recover an area of land the size of Scotland? Tune in to find out why. Find out more about Paul: https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/find-an-expert/professor-paul-behrens 17:45 Planetary Boundaries Framework:  https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-boundaries.html  20:00 Changing food systems towards plants > beef could rewild an area the size of Scotland:  https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-021-00431-5  44:00 Intra-Elite Competition: A Key Concept for Understanding the Dynamics of Complex Societies (Peter Turchin, 2016) https://peterturchin.com/intra-elite-competition-a-key-concept-for-understanding-the-dynamics-of-complex-societies/  50:30 Danish Action Plan for Plant-Based Foods (2023) https://en.fvm.dk/Media/638484294982868221/Danish-Action-Plan-for-Plant-based-Foods.pdf

    1h 4m
  2. Video games and the zeitgeist

    Apr 28

    Video games and the zeitgeist

    Dr Stephen Mallory is assistant professor of game design at Lawrence Technical University in Southfield, Michigan. After a career in the video game industry, Stephen turned his considerable intellect to analysing games as an aspect of digimodernism - the contemporary cultural phenomenon where much of our lived experience, indeed, our reality and even sense of self, is mediated through digital technologies, artifacts, and environments. His research is especially concerned with the intersection of digimodernism and digi-fascism, and how these cultural forces relate to things like the economics of the games industry. If you want to know more about how the largest and fasting growing media industry in the world - that's video games - affects you whether you interact with it or not, tune in to this episode.  08:30 Developer’s Dilemma: The Secret World of Videogame Creators, Casey O’Donnell (2014)  https://direct.mit.edu/books/monograph/4469/Developer-s-DilemmaThe-Secret-World-of-Videogame  10:45 The Death of Postmodernism and Beyond, Alan Kirby (2006)  https://www.pdcnet.org/pdc/bvdb.nsf/purchase26?openform&fp=philnow&id=philnow_2006_0058_0000_0034_0037  13:15 Jesper Juul’s “Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds” https://half-real.net/  14:30 Homo Ludens: a study of the play element in culture, Johan Huizinga (1950) https://radioparasita.org/sites/default/files/Gong/052013/johan_huizinga_homo_ludens_1949_pdf_17266.pdf  20:30 Disco Elysium (2019) https://store.steampowered.com/app/632470/Disco_Elysium__The_Final_Cut/  23:45 Digimodernism: How New Technologies Dismantle the Postmodern and reconfigure Our Culture, Alan Kirby (2009)  https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/digimodernism-9781441175281/

    1h 8m
  3. Metamodernism - culture after the end of history

    Apr 7

    Metamodernism - culture after the end of history

    Timotheus Vermeulen is a full professor of media, culture and society at the University of Oslo in Norway. Together with Robin Van Den Akker, he coined the term metamodernism and kick started scholarship of this new idea, co-founding the webzine Notes on Metamodernity and co-editing the book series Studies in Metamodernism. Metamodernism refers to the culture or structure of feeling that comes after postmodernism - it's what we are living through right now. It's character is contested. One the one hand you have people advocating for sincerity, earnestness, pluralism, and kindness, on the other hand you have reactionaries and cancel culture enthusiasts seeking to impose their preferred grand story against the cynicism of postmodernity. How is metamodernism manifesting in art, politics, and popular culture? Tune in to find out.  00:45  Notes on Metamodernism E-zine https://www.metamodernism.com/  Vermeulen, T., & van den Akker, R. (2010). Notes on metamodernism. Journal of Aesthetics & Culture, 2(1). Available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.3402/jac.v2i0.5677 4:40 Plastic Time: Gesture on Screen (Book) T Vermeulen (2026) 14:40 Notes on by Camp Susan Sontag (1964), Available at: https://monoskop.org/images/5/59/Sontag_Susan_1964_Notes_on_Camp.pdf  22:40 Slavoj Žižek - Kinder Surprise Egg: https://youtu.be/4zHnJWN8YEA?si=vKzdpSXqX_vu53JR  26:57 The Postmodern Condition (1979) Jean-François Lyotard Available at: https://monoskop.org/images/e/e0/Lyotard_Jean-Francois_The_Postmodern_Condition_A_Report_on_Knowledge.pdf  40:30 Doughnut Economics (2017) Kate Raworth 40:45 Citizens: Why the Key to Fixing Everything is All of Us (2023) Jon Alexandar 45:00 Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene (2015) McKenzie Wark  Available at: https://monoskop.org/images/7/70/Wark_McKenzie_ed_Molecular_Red_Reader.pdf  50:30 Doughnut Economics Tools page: https://doughnuteconomics.org/tools

    1h 5m
  4. An insider's guide to the innovation ecosystem

    Mar 6

    An insider's guide to the innovation ecosystem

    Innovation is crucial for improving quality of life and clearing away ossified and unhelpful ways of doing and being, like fossil fuel capitalism. So how do we get it moving? The innovation ecosystem of a nation, a region, or even the world is a complex network of physical infrastructure, human capital, industrial policy, and R&D centres among other things. If any part of the network grows weak, it can drag down the whole system. Here to help us navigate this environment is Halima Jibril, Assistant Professor in Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Warwick Business School. She is Co-Investigator on the £7million Innovation and Research Caucus funded by United Kingdom Research and Innovation. We could not have a better guide.  Halima's website:https://www.wbs.ac.uk/about/person/halima-jibril/     H Jibril, A Kaltenbrunner, E Kesidou (2018), Financialisation and innovation in emerging economies: Evidence from Brazil.https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/181485/1/fmm-imk-wp-27-2018.pdf  Ivan Vendrov Podcast: Robin Hansen on Cultural Evolution and Cultural Drift (2026)https://nothinghuman.substack.com/p/robin-hanson-on-cultural-evolution  Help to Grow: Digital, Department for Business and Trade (2024)https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/help-to-grow-digital-evaluation-report  AI Upskilling fund, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (2024https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/flexible-ai-upskilling-fund   Mazzucato on governments taking equity stake in R&D firms is in her book:https://marianamazzucato.com/books/the-entrepreneurial-state/  French government R&D incentives:https://www.abgi-uk.com/news-resources/innovation-funding-incentives-france/  Halima Jibril, Carol Stanfield, Stephen Roper (2020), What drives productivity growth behind the frontier? A mixed-methods investigation into UK SMEshttps://www.enterpriseresearch.ac.uk/publications/what-drives-productivity-growth-behind-the-frontier-a-mixed-methods-investigation-into-uk-smes-research-paper-no-89/  The Lupe Vacuum cleaner is sadly discontinued: https://vacuumwars.com/lupe-technology-closes-a-loss-to-the-vacuum-industry/

    1h 2m
  5. Data data everywhere yet no meaning to be found

    Feb 6

    Data data everywhere yet no meaning to be found

    It seems these days that we are awash in data. Indeed, in their recent book The Ordinal Society, Marion Foucard and Kieran Healy argue persuasively that the passive data collection facilitated by the internet, digital technologies, wearables, and social media allows us for the first time to map the deep substrate of the social. Is that true though? In all this data, is there signal? Valeria Ramirez from Cambridge University has made a career out of tracking the advent of digital metrics and their revolutionary impact on the way organisations operate, first in journalism's shift to digital media, and now in university knowledge exchanges. She has identified key characteristics that distinguish meaningful from meaningless metrics, and developed a framework for developing the former within any contextualised organisation. If you've ever wondered whether the Netflix algorithm isn't collecting the best data to understand your video preferences, this episode is for you.   www.valeriaramirez.org  https://www.linkedin.com/in/valeriaramirezphd Ramirez, V. (2025). Meaningful Metrics for Knowledge Exchange: Rethinking Social Value Metrics for University–Business and Community Interactions. Policy Evidence Unit for University Commercialisation and Innovation. https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.121347

    58 min
  6. Welcome to metamodernity - complexity science, meaning making, and the return of spirituality

    Jan 15

    Welcome to metamodernity - complexity science, meaning making, and the return of spirituality

    Metamodernism is the cultural mode that is emerging after postmodernism, and boy do we need it. Postmodernism was a period of deconstruction. A necessary deconstruction, I hasten to say, one that shook the foundations of many obsolete structures that kept people oppressed like homophobia, patriarchy, colonialism, and opinions masquerading as expertise. But as there was only deconstruction, we find our culture mired in a nihilistic swamp. How can we reconstruct shared values, shared perspectives on the world, shared culture? How can we escape our meaning crisis? Brendan Graham Dempsey is at the forefront of the both science and humanities aspects of metamodernism, blending complex systems theory, theology, neuroscience, existentialism and gardening in his efforts to articulate a new way to do old things. He has written an edited a series of books on metamodern spirituality, and is now publishing a second series specifically on meaning-making. Brendan's website: https://www.brendangrahamdempsey.com/ Vermeulen and Van Den Akker's original metamodernism website: https://www.metamodernism.com/ And one of their early papers: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.3402/jac.v2i0.5677 An analysis of Nihilistic themes in Ric & Morty and Bojack Horseman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsotfzGpby8 An analysis of metamodern tropes in Everything Everywhere All At Once: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xEi8qg266g Lyotard on The Postmodern Condition: https://monoskop.org/images/e/e0/Lyotard_Jean-Francois_The_Postmodern_Condition_A_Report_on_Knowledge.pdf Brendan's book Emergentism: https://www.brendangrahamdempsey.com/emergentism Kolchinsky and Wolpert on Meaning making in information theory: https://www.santafe.edu/news-center/news/new-definition-returns-meaning-information Brendan's new book on the evolution of meaning - free with his substack! https://brendangrahamdempsey.substack.com/p/publishing-my-new-book-on-substack John Vervaeke on metamodernism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=De6ZIHThONI

    1h 5m
  7. TL;DR Truth Bombs - The Essence of Aphorisms with James Geary

    11/10/2025

    TL;DR Truth Bombs - The Essence of Aphorisms with James Geary

    In one of his Letters Provinciales, the French philosopher and Theologian Blaise Pascal apologises that “I have made this letter longer than usual because I have not had the time to make it shorter”. This is an aphoristic statement that could form one part of the definition of an aphorism: a pithy observation that contains a general truth. There are thousands of well-known aphorisms coming in all manner of media, like the old proverb “a rolling stone gathers no moss”, or the quite recent lyrics from the Rolling Stones: “you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you’ll find you get what you need”. My guest this episode is an expert in aphorisms, James Geary, adjunct lecturer in writing for public policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School. He is the author of the New York Times Bestseller The World in a Phrase: A Brief History of the Aphorism, original published way back in 2005 but recently reprinted in its 2nd edition on account of all the new aphoristic content coming out of social media. What’s the difference between a twitter hot take or a tiktok sketch and an aphorism, well you’ll just have to stay with us to find out.   James Website https://jamesgeary.com/ The book! https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-world-in-a-phrase-a-brief-history-of-the-aphorism-second-edition-james-geary/7852688

    1h 2m
  8. Replication, preregistration, and open science – what’s all the fuss about?

    10/22/2025

    Replication, preregistration, and open science – what’s all the fuss about?

    The so-called “replication crisis” engulfed psychology over the last 10 years, with numerous failures to reproduce canonical studies from the biggest names in the discipline like Dweck’s growth mindset, Baumeister’s willpower as a muscle, and around half of Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow. Interrogation of this failure of replicate led to discoveries of p-hacking, publication bias, a huge disconnect between the theories psychologists were supposedly testing and the cute little studies they were using for that purpose. Eventually there was even evidence of outright fraud, notably in the case of Harvard’s Francesca Gino, Duke’s Dan Arielly, and others. Hearing all this in the news, you might wonder: why is replication so crucial to the progress of science? Is there anything we can do improve the credibility of scientific practice? Does preregistering our intended analysis and expected results have an effect?  Here to answer all these questions and more is Patrick Vu, Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of New South Wales in my hometown of Sydney, Australia. Fresh off a PhD from Brown investigating the statistical side of replication and publication bias, Patrick is at the bleeding edge of these issues.  Patrick’s website: https://www.patrickhvu.com/ Study where multiple research teams use the same data to test the same hypothesis:  https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/117278/1/pnas.2203150119.pdf  The paper that launched the replication crisis – Why most published research findings are false: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1182327/  Karl Popper’s The Logic of Scientific Discovery: https://philotextes.info/spip/IMG/pdf/popper-logic-scientific-discovery.pdf  My favourite paper from Andrew Gelman: https://sites.stat.columbia.edu/gelman/research/published/gelman_hennig_full_discussion.pdf  Open Science Collaboration - Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aac4716  Nancy Cartwright insights: https://personal.lse.ac.uk/robert49/teaching/ph201/Week09_Hoefer.pdf

    51 min
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About

Medicine for intellectual boredom. Host Dr Mark Fabian of Cambridge University brings together an eclectic mix of creative young folk to discuss the most stimulating ideas at the knowledge frontier, from data governance to the metamodern cultural mode, and everything in between. The world's most thoughtful people, having a chat - and you're invited! So turn off your socials, throw away your popular science books, and get ready for some legit galaxy brain takes. Thanks to Keith Spangle for the spaceship cat avatar https://www.deviantart.com/keithspangle

Information

  • Creator
    Mark Fabian
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2026
  • Episodes
    63
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 ePODstemology
  • Show Website
    ePODstemology